1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to vehicle navigation apparatus and programs which control vehicle navigation apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
In a conventional navigation apparatus, when a place of departure (or the current position), and a destination are input, search data, such as road data, is read out and a route search is performed based on preset search logic, for example, the shortest traveling distance and/or preference for a particular road type. As the user selects one of the routes which is searched, the user is guided by visual signals and/or audio signals along the selected route until the user reaches the destination.
In some cases, however, a route returned by a search based only on search logic and search data as described above may not fit the user's preferred route. Many conventional navigation apparatus accumulate and store various driving data. Then, based on the stored driving data the navigation apparatus predicts a relating to a user's driving preferences, such as a preferred route and considers the user's preferences during a route search. For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 9-292251 describes a navigation apparatus that stores the number of times a user passes a certain intersection and returns routes that contain intersections that the user prefers. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 8-16991 describes a navigation apparatus that registers route characteristics such as width of road, a kind of road, traveling speed that the vehicle traveled, determines the user's preferences with respect to those route characteristics, and considers the users preferences when searching for a route.